By reading this guide, you will be able to know about what are the odds of winning the Postcode Lottery. The People’s Postcode Lottery is essentially a subscription-based access service for all British citizens across the UK. People pay a monthly fee of £10 to enter their ticket into the lottery pool and you can win some exciting prizes.
As if there is a new lottery every week. From the National Lottery to the Health Lottery, there’s no shortage of options for you if you want to register and participate in a random drawing that may or may not result in you winning a prize.
One big thing that always seems to be advertised on TV is the Postcode Lottery, which promises a chance to participate in the most exciting street party if your post code wins prizes in a week or two.
Unlike the traditional lottery system, the Postal People’s Lottery is based on the postal code of the place where the participants play. The advantage of playing this lottery is that if a post code wins, all the players belonging to that particular post code will get a prize. Know more about the odds of postcodes from lotteryresulthouse if you are interested.
What Is the Postcode Lottery?
The first thing we want to do here is to understand what the Postcode lottery actually is. It is like any other lottery, where you choose to participate and it depends on the lottery who wins. However, the difference between the Postcode lottery and the likes of the National Lottery is that you don’t choose the numbers you want to play with.
Instead, the post code of the property you live in is part of your numbers, with all Post codes entered in each draw to win. Postal lotteries are not just about giving people a chance to win money. 33% of every ticket sold is donated to a good cause, so people know they are more likely to win something in addition to helping others.
Given the fact that tickets cost £10 a month, this means that for every ticket sold, £3.30 goes to charity. You can sign up for up to three tickets per month, which means your decision to sign up will cost you £9.90 for good reason.
Prizes provided by the lottery service
For withdrawals, all participating postal codes are entered into a program approved by the UK Gambling Commission. The program then uses a random number generator to choose the winning postal code from all the codes entered.
There is always an independent arbiter when a draw is made, ensuring that each draw is as fair as possible. Generally, all draws take place on the first Wednesday of the month, and winners are announced daily.
Awards are given in three different categories:
- £1,000 is awarded daily from Monday to Saturday.
- The £30,000 street prize is awarded exclusively on Saturdays and Sundays.
- The Postcode Millions prize is awarded every month.
In addition, daily draws are available with a relatively high chance of winning the competitions mentioned above due to the minimum prize money of £10 and £20. So you might be able to win these prizes two or three times a week.
Moreover, postcodes are entered once per month in each drawing. Instead, these prizes are not shared between postcodes, the full amount of each winning ticket is announced. If you have more than one ticket, you get one prize per ticket.
So if the postcode you live in wins a £30,000 street party and you have two tickets, you win £60,000. You will win. The outline is the Millions PostCode Draw, which looks at the combined amount between the winning postcode and surrounding postcodes.
What Are the Odds?
The biggest problem is that we don’t know exactly how many postcodes are entered in the lottery each time. At the time of writing, however, we do know that the Postal Lottery claims that 69% of post codes currently play the post lottery.
There are approximately 1,191,268 postcodes in the UK, which means that approximately 1,191,268 postcodes can be entered in any drawing. At this point, it should be clear that we are talking about the UK specifically here, not the UK. Residents of Northern Ireland are not eligible to participate in the raffle, which is almost certain because of the various gambling license laws.
The reason this is important is that it changes the number of postcodes that can be played, so when the postcode lottery says 69% of postcodes play 69% from the UK and 69% from the UK. Now that we know how many postcodes will be included, at least at the time of writing, we can do some basic math to figure out the likely possibilities.
To keep things as simple as possible, let’s say we’re looking at a 30-day month that includes four weekends. Obviously, this won’t be completely accurate, but at least it’s a solid starting point that gives us a vague idea of what we’re talking about.
The operating system
Users pay a monthly subscription fee and then are asked to select “Play PostCode”. These numbers will then enter the lottery and will be the basis on which the winners will be determined.
Contestants enter each category into a drawing, and postcodes are matched to a random winner. So, the area in which you live indirectly affects your chances of winning.
For those who want to know the probability of winning a prize during the month, the math is as follows:
| DRAW | NUMBER PER MONTH | CHANCES | ODDS |
| Thursday £10 | 4,000 | 4,000 in 1,191,268 | 1 in 298 |
| Daily £1,000 | 600 | 600 in 1,191,268 | 1 in 1,985 |
| Saturday / Sunday £30,000 | 8 | 8 in 1,191,268 | 1 in 148,909 |
| Monthly Jackpot | 1 | 1 in 1,191,268 | 1 in 1,191,268 |
(8 + 400 + 4000 + 1) in 1,191,268 = 1 in 270
So, if you participate in the Postcode Lottery, you have a 1 in 270 chance of winning any kind of prize in a month, assuming that all months have 30 days and that four of them are weekends. Of course, in real life, the math is a little different, thanks to the fact that months are longer and shorter than 30 days and don’t always have four weekends.
However, we needed to simplify the math to find the least obvious odds for the mail lottery using the information we had.
People that plays the Postcode lottery
There are a total of 1,800,000 postal codes in the UK. Data presented on the official People’s Postcode Lottery website shows that approximately 60% of all postcodes participate in the lottery. The number of players from each postcode is not fixed and known, but the more participants there are, the more you have to share your prize if you win.
The exact population has not been determined as the number may increase or decrease over time. Therefore, one cannot say that only a certain number of people play.
For daily £10 and £20 withdrawals, the estimated probability of winning is 1/270. This makes them less competitive because they offer higher prize money and are easier to win.
The maximum prize to be won per ticket in the Postcode Million Prize is £400,000, which means that the total prize money is split between each person in the winning postcode. Therefore, as more people play, the single-player share eventually decreases.
The winning amount will be transferred to the bank account within 28 days. Therefore, if the prize is worth £3,000 or more, you will need to register your bank details on the site. Additionally, if you participate using your credit card, you must do the same to claim the prize of the stated value.
Should you play it?
Now that we have a vague idea of the chances of winning the various prizes available in the Mail Lottery, the next question some people would like to ask is whether they should play. Like any form of gambling, what you do when playing the lottery depends largely on individual circumstances.
Many people will not have income available to spend on anything, let alone gambling. For others, they will not spare the £10 to £30 per month it costs them to play. Of course, if your intention to play the game is to make your fortune, you will make the mistake of gambling. The only sure thing when it comes to betting is that you will lose your bet.
Whether or not you will get your stake back is entirely up to luck, over which you have absolutely no control. In other words, you should play the postcode lottery only if you can afford to lose your stake every time you play, without any money coming back to you as a prize.
Some points to note
Participation in the lottery as a syndicate is not allowed as it will confuse the players. Also, the organization never offers scratch cards or any kind of winnings by chance.
Cancellation
Cancellation or any other desirable change in continuing membership. All you have to do is contact the customer service mentioned on the website. You can also switch bank accounts on the same number.
Note
Many UK residents have won lottery prizes, and this has helped them avoid debt or plan better for their future. Many articles on the web mention stories of people who played the lottery and emerged as winners. Some sites accept and cheat money in exchange for huge rewards. Many of these incidents came to light. The People’s Mail Lottery has warned people not to fall for such fraud
